Auschwitz and Darfur

The images from Sudan are horrific: wounded, starving, diseased adults; skeletal, dying infants. Some people have referred to this as “ethnic cleansing,” and the U.S. called it “genocide.” Since 2003, an estimated 400,000 Africans have been massacred by the state-sanctioned Janjaweed (“men on horses”), many of them through savage torture. Many men had their eyes poked out. Countless women were raped, and if they refused, their arms and legs were broken. Children were mutilated while others perished from famine and disease. Two million people have been displaced from their homes and villages.

As youngsters, many of us could not fathom how the world remained silent as six million Jews were taken to their deaths. How was it that even among many Jews apathy prevailed? How, we wondered, could anybody go to sleep at night knowing that tomorrow another 12,000 Jews (as was the number in 1944) would be gassed?

But human nature knows all too cruelly how to detach. One of the tragic ironies of life: As many of us get ready to enjoy a serene weekend, in Darfur others will brace for rape, torture and death.

And the world remains silent.

Eli Wiesel once remarked that the lesson of the Holocaust was that “you could get away with it.” Was he incorrect? Cambodia, Rwanda, Serbia and now Sudan demonstrate that at times it seems futile to ask where lies the conscious of the world.

Yes, the situation is complicated. The semi cease-fire attempts have been broken both by the Janjaweed and by the rebels who oppose the government. Yet it is incomprehensible that U.S. and world leaders find any item to be more important and urgent than genocide in Sudan.

And the hypocrisy is alarming, too. Ten weeks ago, on Nov. 8, 2006, Israel erroneously sent a missile to Beit Hanun in Gaza which tragically claimed the lives of 18 Palestinians, among them children. There was an international uproar. The United Nations, loyal to what has become its “mission statement,” issued forth a condemnation and world leaders expressed outrage. The incident was discussed for weeks on the front pages of the world media and web sites. The missile was an error; it was targeting terrorists launching rockets against Israeli civilians, and Israel expressed regret for its devastating mistake. In Sudan, the government intentionally encouraged the murder of 400,000 innocent individuals, but weeks go by with scarcely a mention in the world’s press.

The former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Darfur are all conflicts that have taken many more lives than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet they receive nowhere near the attention that Israel does. There are 200,000 child soldiers in Sierra Leone alone, but who even knows about that? One peace activist, Rachel Corrie, ignores IDF warnings to stay out of the way and accidentally gets crushed by a bulldozer, and the world can’t get over it.

In recent weeks we’ve heard the outcry concerning the inhumane method in which Saddam Hussein was hanged. “The means of his execution,” former Carter speechwriter James Fallows wrote in the Atlantic, “is what will haunt us.” Granted, even mass murders deserve a fair trial and execution, but why has the fate of Saddam inspired more compassion than the poor children of Sudan who are forced to observe in horror the flowing blood of their parents? Saddam’s death will haunt us? Perhaps. But why doesn’t the death of the 400,000 in Darfur and the 800,000 in Rwanda haunt us? Are we not observing today the truth of the profound psychological observation our sages stated long ago, that “One who exercises compassion toward the cruel, will end up exercising cruelty toward the compassionate.” (Midrash Rabah Koheles 7:15.)

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On Jan. 27, 62 years ago, Russian troops entered the little Polish town of Auschwitz, and saw sights we still find difficult to comprehend. It was their first glimpse of the Final Solution: the planned extermination of every Jew in Europe. It’s hard to sense the sheer scale of the destruction. On Sept. 11, 2001, history was changed by a terrorist attack in which 3,000 people died. During the Holocaust, on average, 3,000 Jews were killed every day of every week for five-and-a-half years. And the killing didn’t stop with just Jews: the mentally ill, the physically handicapped, gypsies and gays were murdered because they were different.

There is no comparison between the Holocaust and what is happening today in Darfur. The Holocaust was exceptional in the scientific precision with which it was carried out. It was unprecedented in the sheer scale on which it was conceived. But what made it different from other mass murders was that it served no interest. At the height of the slaughter, the Nazis diverted trains from the Russian front to transport victims to the extermination camps. As Emil Fackenheim once put it, the Holocaust was evil for evil’s sake.

There is no comparison, but there is a connection. Both are what happen when human beings lose the capacity to live together despite our differences, and fail to make space for one another despite our conflicting aspirations.

In this week’s portion (Bo), as the Hebrews are set free, Moses cautions them to “remember this day on which you departed from Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Exodus 13:3). Moses knew how easy it is to forget and he warned his people never to forget. That is because those who forget the past are more likely to remain apathetic to those suffering in the present.

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